There's plenty of retcons that are stupid, terrible, or great, but I feel like we don't talk enough about the ones that are outright funny. My personal winner is the Barry Allen's first appearance calling all the Golden Age heroes comic books characters, which not only had the confusing question of if there were Batman and Superman comics about the REAL Batman and Superman, but was darn near IMMEDIATELY undone in "The Flash of Two Worlds." It's so unintentionally funny to me.

True - the sheer absurdity of some retcons can be genuinely hilarious. Imagine being Batman, finding out there are comics about you in another universe, and wondering if you’re getting royalties. Another one this reminds me of is when Marvel tried to streamline the science of powers by throwing around ‘mutations’ as an explanation for everything. For a while, it felt like half the Marvel roster — Spider-Man, Hulk, even Daredevil — were getting described as ‘mutants’ - it ended up sounding unintentionally silly, especially with the X-Men around.

Spider-Man: Chapter One making Norman Osborn and Sandman distant cousins... because John Byrne noticed the two Spidey villains had similar wavy hairstyles.

Less funny, HAHA, in a way, but still kind of ridiculous, is the retcon that made the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver no longer mutants or the children of Magneto.

It's such a vindictive and petty retcon. Even though Marvel Studios has had the rights to mutants for years now, it's weird they haven't fully gotten rid of the retcon. Are they really that worried about confusing the general public or something? The general public is already confused!

Even though its super recent, I think the one in Batman Dark Prisons(?) where he explained that Zur En Arrh corrupted Bruce in The Gotham War as to why he was out of charcter for that whole event felt like that infamous Gas Leak Year retcon in Community about season 4 being so bad. I busted out laughing at that one

I kid you not: Spider-Man's Clone Saga in the '90s ending with the reveal that Norman Osborn is still alive blew the minds of an entire generation!

...but like so much of the '90s, now we look back on it and laugh until shame makes us bury our face in our hands.

On 8/25/2025 at 1:18 PM, MisaelDuran said:

Less funny, HAHA, in a way, but still kind of ridiculous, is the retcon that made the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver no longer mutants or the children of Magneto.

It's such a vindictive and petty retcon. Even though Marvel Studios has had the rights to mutants for years now, it's weird they haven't fully gotten rid of the retcon. Are they really that worried about confusing the general public or something? The general public is already confused!

This one legit makes me angry.